Notes and Editorial Reviews
This engaging recital has been extremely well recorded. Admirers of the instrument should find much to reward them.
Alison Teale is the principal cor anglais player with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and her colleague Elizabeth Burley is an experienced and well-travelled pianist. Together they make a good team in works designed originally, or in transcription, to demonstrate the instrument’s lyricism and agility.
They have had the good idea not to start with Robert Valentine’s Handelian Sonata, which is second in the track listing. I appreciate things can be programmed as one chooses, but the avoidance of the obvious route of ‘Baroque Opener’ is an index of canny judgement, especially given the moody
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preferred choice of de Falla. The evocative terpsichorean charm of the two movements from
El Amor Brujo get things off to a flamenco-drenched, languid and richly hued start. Messiaen’s
Vocalise is richly lyrical. And I rather admire Teale’s booklet note comment on Michael Berkeley’s
Snake about which she is clearly ambivalent, having a ‘love-hate relationship’ with it. She admires its colours though, and I like its coiling but lulling song, and clever narrative. I know it’s a beautiful piece of music but it is unusual to find the slow movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major here, reduced to two instruments.
Piazzolla’s
Nightclub 1960 was originally written for flute. It’s typical Piazzolla – fast/slow, sex and nostalgia. Rubbra is made of firmer, finer stuff. I wouldn’t go as far as Teale, who puts him up there with Elgar and VW, but the Duo has the long lines and sense of inevitability of utterance so reflective of his finest music.
Lucchetti’s
Rock Song is a breathless whirl that gradually unwinds to calm stasis after its centrifugal burn. Bozza is best known for his virtuosic brass writing, and his
Divertissement is a most attractive piece with an especially energetic final section. Another pillar in the programme, offering ballast to what might otherwise appear to be scattershot, is Hindemith’s 1941 Sonata, a perfectly proportioned piece that manages to be both evocative and uneasy; and it’s very well played. Of course, there’s
The Swan. Less obviously there is also the fun and virtuosity of
Un pensiero del Ballo in Maschera, a Verdi paraphrase by Antonio Pasculli. As a closer there’s David Gordon’s good-time and dramatic
Bebop tango. I reviewed this in its original incarnation, but in this version it’s been arranged for Teale’s cor anglais.
This engaging recital has been extremely well recorded. Admirers of the instrument should find much to reward them.
-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International
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Works on This Recording
2.
El amor brujo: Pantomime by Manuel de Falla
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1914-1915; Spain
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 3 Minutes 33 Secs.
3.
Sonata for trumpet & organ, No 10 in C by Robert Valentine
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: Baroque
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 2 Minutes 7 Secs.
4.
Vocalise-étude for Soprano and Piano by Olivier Messiaen
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1935; France
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 4 Minutes 47 Secs.
5.
Snake by Michael Berkeley
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1990; England
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 4 Minutes 45 Secs.
6.
History of the Tango: Night club 1960 by Astor Piazzolla
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 5 Minutes 34 Secs.
9.
Sonata for English Horn and Piano by Paul Hindemith
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1941; USA
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 10 Minutes 25 Secs.
10.
Carnival of the animals: no 13, The swan by Camille Saint-Saëns
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1886; France
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 3 Minutes 1 Secs.
12.
Bebop Tango, for cor anglais & piano by David Gordon
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 4 Minutes 16 Secs.
13.
Piano Concerto in G major: 2nd Movement by Maurice Ravel
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: Modern
Written: 1929-1931; France
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 6 Minutes 24 Secs.
14.
Duo for English horn & piano, Op 156 by Edmund Rubbra
Performer:
Elizabeth Burley (Piano)
Period: Modern
Date of Recording: 07/2010
Venue: Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, UK
Length: 4 Minutes 31 Secs.
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